1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to information processing apparatus and methods, and more particularly, to an information processing apparatus that is connectable to other electronic units so as to form a system to apply specified processing to main image data, sub-image data, and audio data input from the electronic units, and to an information processing method therefor.
2. Description of Related Art
In a conventional electronic camera, after an image taken of a subject is digitized, the data is compressed by any number of specified methods and then stored in a memory or in a recording medium.
The image stored in the electronic camera can be read into a personal computer. Various types of processing can be applied to the read image by use of many functions provided by the personal computer.
Recently, as a growing number of technologies have advanced, electronic cameras are developing in which, in addition to an image (hereinafter called a main image) of a subject, a sub-image (such as, e.g., a memo superimposed and stored on the image of the subject) and audio information can be recorded along with the main image.
In such an electronic camera, a main image (image of a subject) is handled as main data, and a sub-image and audio data are added to the main data to form a recording unit. Each recording unit is stored in memory.
When information that is stored in a conventional electronic camera in recording units, each of which is formed from multiple types of data, is sent to a personal computer, since the order in which the data is sent is not taken into account, the information is not necessarily reproduced in an appropriate order. For example, if sound is reproduced first, it is difficult in many cases to understand all of the information currently being reproduced based on the sound only. Depending on the audio data, it may take a long time to reproduce the data. In that case, when sound is reproduced first, nothing is shown on the screen for the time while the sound is being reproduced.